


Of Myth and Legend

by cadkitten



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angels, Judgement, M/M, Religion, Variations on Ancient Egyptian Religion, compassion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 21:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: Gods have walked among us. We have seen them with our own eyes. Felt them with our own hands.We have felt their wrath and we have seen their hell.





	Of Myth and Legend

**Author's Note:**

> For #JayDamiWeek - Day 5: Demon’s Head!Damian/Immortal!Jason  
> Beta: kate1zena  
> Song[s]: 11:11 by In This Moment

_Gods have walked among us. We have seen them with our own eyes. Felt them with our own hands._

_We have felt their wrath and we have seen their hell._

It's a text Damian knows well. One he's read a hundred times from the crumbling paper on the wall of his grandfather's great room. The parchment is charred at the edges, worn as though it has seen the grip of the very hell it discusses.

He's read it while waiting on his grandfather as long as he can remember but it has never really _meant_ anything. It was a relic; a piece of a world that has long since burned and been reborn. The gods are a myth, a legend that has no substance in this world: the world that he lives in.

It is but parchment upon the wall.

\-----

_We opened the tomb expecting one of our long-dead ancestors, another piece of our past. We were prepared only for the things we have encountered in the past. The traps and triggers of this civilization we have been studying for nearly twenty years of our careers. Somewhere in our minds we were expecting the gleaming gold of Tut or the beautiful paintings of Menkheperrasonb._

_It has been four years since we opened the grave of what we thought to be one of the lost rulers of the old world. Four long years that none of us have wanted to venture into explanation of what we saw there that day. But I sit here today, penning this for the world to know, to understand one day, as my last breath draws near._

_All the care we've taken over the years and of all things, it's my heart that will claim me. A week at best. I figure.... the time has come and gone where I can hold off on telling this tale. And so, here we are._

_This tomb, a tomb I cannot lay name to in my usual fashion. I would write you the hieroglyphs but they do not exist. I can only tell you this is the tomb of an Angel. A beautiful messenger of another world, of another place and time that breaks everything we have ever conceived of religion and the variances across our times and cultures._

_The word 'angel' doesn't exist with the Egyptians. The word comes from Greek, from angelo which as close as my knowledge of Greek allows, would mean something along the lines of "I announce." Angels are supposed to be messengers. Not the mouthpieces, not Metatron, but the messengers, the announcers of God's will. As it goes, they were given wings to carry these messages from God to the earth._

_But in Egypt, the gods remained in their temples, close to where they came from, far up from the masses below them, but able to be visited by mortals. They did not need angels to deliver their messages, they did it themselves. See, Egypt's gods were touchable: existing in the same realm as the mortals, though upon a pedestal. While Christianity's God lives in the heavens, a place where one can only visit once they are dead. Inaccessible, unavailable. It's the tangible versus the essence. Faith in what you cannot see versus faith that someone was telling the truth._

_Regardless, the Egyptian gods did not need angels. The two things were not compatible. A myth and a legend never to cross paths._

_Until this day._

_Three men alone in the middle of the sweltering heat, blistering sun, and the biggest sand trap on earth, doing what we've always done best – digging up ancient Egyptian shit and giving name to it._

_Three men who have questioned their own sanity for four years because of one life-altering event._

_We found an angel. Real and very much alive... and he had been trapped in that tomb for longer than any of us care to think._

_What can I say besides bluntly telling you that we released this angel into the modern world? That he stumbled like a drunkard into the sunlight and when he fell to his knees, the blindingly white wings that extended from his back turned ashen, then black and fell from his body, dust before us._

_A being of pure radiance overcome by the horrors of this world. That is all we can think of what we saw._

_We watched eyes of pure hope turn sad and agonized. Watched something beautiful turn to dirt._

_This is our shame, our cross to wear strapped to our backs in the afterlife. No matter our belief systems, no matter what we think or do or say, we are all filth. We left that angel to die. We ran like scared little beetles and we left him there. And this... this is our confession to the worst sin imaginable._

_We have forsaken one of God's own creatures._

Somewhere deep in these words, Damian finds another memory, a vague outline of a childhood story he once heard his father's servants lay tongue to. Whispered conversations in the hallways where he should never have been. 

He recalls the hushed whispers of urgency, of fear that _Malak_ was dying. It was the only time he'd ever heard that word spoken in his household. The only time anyone _dared_ to bring an implication of something such as that into his world.

The al Ghul family held their rites and rituals in high regard, but religion _was not_ among them. The teachings of the world, of a world steeped in it, were very much present, but the practice was not. To hear a word such as _angel_ spoken in the hallways, to hear the breath of fear associated with it, had been a memory he clutched onto.

But as much as he'd held onto it, his mind had wandered, had become preoccupied with things of higher importance. His training, his life ahead of him, his _birthright_ to one day take his grandfather's place. And while the memory had remained, the curiosity had not.

Until now.

\----

_It came to my attention through the usual means that there was a being of great power roaming the sands somewhere north of al-Harrah. Both described as radiant light and brilliance and as darkened death. White wings or the frayed stubs of what had once been._

_I sent my men to claim this being for further examination and after successful extraction and rigorous testing we have entombed the being within our walls. Doctor Kathor's notes from A.34 to A.78 detail the testing, results of which boil down to great power when entombed and away from the prying eyes of any person in this world and the wit of a brain-damaged slug when confronted with any more than two people at the same time. It would appear that humanity itself steals power from this being._

_The servants who have been tasked with ensuring he is alive each day have come to call our subject Jason due to the images he has covered his tomb with. He repeatedly draws the symbol that has only been translated into _dja_ , the assumption of translation being to float - and the lotus flower, or the Greek souson. Perhaps irrelevant, but he appears to respond to it when they call him by such a name and it has remained._

_Limited people have been allowed in his presence, but all of those people have seen only a being who is withered and tired, the stubs of wings long-since burned away on his back. Yet the cameras installed in his tomb show us the radiant being some described before we obtained him. Bright white wings and strength that radiates in his very image._

It is this, a file from his grandfather's many notebooks that spurs Damian into action, that sends him to the depths of their compound in search of things he's never so much as deliberated. 

His thoughts circle, round and round, coming and going as quickly as the air intakes and exhales from his lungs. 

Is this an angel?

Is he every bit as powerful as his grandfather has assumed?

Where can he find those files from the doctor? A man long-since fallen to his grave. 

Would it matter if he had them?

He finds his way down the lengthy corridors he has not visited in years, expanses of the grounds that he's had no use for. Past the servant's rooms, into the depths of the inner workings of this place. 

He opens every door along the way, every corner and hidden nook and cranny checked until the finds one door that will not budge.

It takes him a little under an hour, but he finds the panel hidden on the other side of the room that reveals a keypad, four numbers worn and he _knows_ those numbers. They are his own.

Trembling fingers enter the numbers and he turns as the door slides open, a puff of air releasing with it, and from within he hears the barest rasp of _prayer_. 

Careful steps bring him to the door and he slips inside without a second thought. For a mere second he sees a man, fragile and broken on the ground, sees the stubs of charred wings, the gaunt pull of starvation in his face, and then it's gone. He hears the draw of air into the being's lungs, watches as radiance surrounds him, as he pulls together into the single most beautiful being Damian has ever seen. Blindingly white wings stretch behind him and he seems to almost shimmer in the light. Strength surrounds the being and Damian takes a few steps closer to the bars, almost reaches for them when there's a whisper of, "Careful."

His hand pauses in the air, eyes jerking to the bars and then around the room, finding the way they are wired into the electrical grid of the compound. 

Instead, he settles close to the bars, one hand on the wall and all of the words he wants to speak stuck in his throat. 

This myth... this _legend_ is real.

He's quiet for long enough that the angel – for Damian is quite sure that no one was wrong about that – uncurls from his seated position and makes his way to the bars as well. 

"Why have you come?"

Damian stares at him – long and hard – debates the truth of his answer as much as he debates even holding a conversation with this being. He would say there was a good reason why his grandfather locked him away, would say there's something more to it than this beings power... but he knows his grandfather's cruelty. He's felt it first hand, has the scars to remind him of it. With that, he understands that power is the only motivation here.

He pushes away from the wall without a word, kneels next to where the power connects to the bars, and he traces it out of the room, leaves without comment, and when he finds the switch, he only hesitates for a fraction of a second. 

There's only ever been one question he needed the answer to, one thing he's wanted to know for all these years. 

Is he as lost and cruel as his grandfather?

Now he knows. Now he can see in the pure _hope_ of an angel that he is not. Years of things he'd not proud of, things he was taught to do in his youth that he would never repeat now that he is older. Years of _wrong_ replaced by the _right_ of his father's moral compass. 

His hand flips the switch, the lights flicker for a second and he can feel the presence of the angel behind him, _waits_ on his judgment even if he doesn't turn to face it. 

"You have freed me." There's marvel in that voice, a certain lack of understanding beneath it, and he feels his heart warm for the first time in a very _very_ long time.

"I would have sooner if I had known you were real."

The whisper of the angel's wings, his steps so gentle that if Damian hadn't been trained as well as he was, he would not have heard him at all.

"Would you have freed me as the broken being you first saw?"

There is no hesitation. "Yes."

"And if I were a simple man?"

Now Damian turns to face his judgment, his chin raising just the slightest, strength dancing in his eyes. "A man would have been dead. I would have given him a proper send off core to whatever belief system I believed him to be."

He and the angel face off for a moment, there's heat in the air and there's determination in the depths of his eyes and then the angel reaches for him, holds his hand between them and Damian finds his first hesitation.

He takes a deep breath and their fingers touch, only the tips, the caress of cool skin against his own warmth startling, and for an instant he cannot breathe. It's as though his entire life is being sucked from him, drained out of his body and then filtered back in.

He feels the weight of his past settle on him again and then he feels the light of his redemption. The hatred of his youth covered in a blanket of learned compassion. The wounds of leaving the life that taught him everything _right_ to step back into the darkness because if he didn't...

That wasn't a thought he wanted to have.

The angel's fingertips slip away from his own. "You wished judgment. Everything about you asked me for it. Do you want to know your determination?"

Damian lifts his eyes from where their hands had been, clenches his jaw against the tide of emotions he's been taught to keep to himself, and he gives the slightest nod. 

Has he done all he could to repair his past?

Has he accomplished enough good, enough sacrifice to cover the horrors of his youth?

Or has everything been too little, too late in the face of what he has done?

"You see me in all of my brilliance, do you not?"

"I do."

He watches the small quirk of the angel's lips, the way his wings ruffled behind him and then settle. "You had your answer before my judgment for only those who are deserving may see me as I truly am." The angel begins to skirt the room, his hand passing over grime-covered walls, cleansing them in his wake. "I see a child, shaped by his environment, by learned values of those around him and I see a young man who chose to change his path. I see regret and every attempt to do more right than wrong in everything since then. I see sacrifice of the ultimate variety - your own death in the name of justice. I see the small things and the big ones, every waking breath devoted to a path to redeem yourself for what you held only a fragile sort of control over as a child."

The angel pauses in front of him, studies him for a moment and then continues past him, cleansing the walls as he goes, skipping only the area right behind Damian. "I see a man who has left behind the world he wanted in an effort to fix the one he left behind. I am intimately familiar with the man whose place you take, with the cruelty that extended from his very existence and I see the reasons why you left behind family to claim something you did not want."

He's completed the circuit of the room and he turns to face Damian, spreads his arms and offers. "There are years of dirt and pain stained on the wall behind you and yet, I only see radiance when I look in your direction. I see the purest soul I have encountered since being freed from the tomb in Egypt." His hands come to rest at his sides. "Your judgment is that you have atoned, that if you wanted to, you could leave this place and never look back and your soul would be clear."

Three steps brings the angel to Damian, connects their fingertips again, his breath a whisper across the air. "Touch the wall."

Damian turns, places his hand against the wall and watches the spread of his touch cleanse the stones. "But you will not leave. You will fight until the world is as clean as this wall. Until your dying day."

Damian's breath catches, his emotions overwhelm, and he finds desperation in trying to hold them back. 

There's a sensation like ice and then fire in his veins and he gasps, stumbles, and almost falls if it weren't for the arms around him, for the whisper of that same voice coming from a very different looking person holding him up. "You share my gifts and my life." There's a moment where Damian can't breathe and then his breath is pure, the relief of it all-encompassing, and the angel is moving away from him.

"I have seen others who should see me for who I am, who should share in my gifts and my life just as you have. The people you left behind, who gave you the values you treasure. I have seen their loss, their pain, their fight."

Three steps to the door and he turns, a smile on his lips that grips Damian's heart so tightly he fears for the continued existence of it. "I will be there when you need me to be. You only need say my name."

Damian's mouth forms the word before he can stop it, wraps around the syllables and frees it into the world, a quiet gasp of, " _Jason_."


End file.
